Ruleset as Lingua Franca - I wanna sell my 4E collection

[Umbran]

... do these things encourage you to think that 5E will have the design sensibility, bare creativity, or sheer money behind it that both 3E and 4E had?

Has WotC hired any talented designer of late?

Monte Cook? You know, that bare creativity behind 3e you mentioned?

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Has WotC hired any talented designer of late? Have they expanded R&D beyond hiring a MtG hack who's picked up gaming D&D three years ago?

Not only do I disagree with your opinion, I disagree with the sentiment behind it. I think it is a great idea to pull people into Design from other industries.

Tom LaPille may not have a long history of playing D&D, but he can bring his MtG design experience (which using the term 'hack' is highly insulting to a game that outsells D&D) and he has the perspective of what interests newcomers to the game. MtG design has alot of structural elements that seem lacking in D&D design. I think you're looking at this from too much of a player's perspective. You don't just sit down and write a game. You need to plan and look at the long-term picture. 4E could have benefitted from some forward-thinking design organization.

And I think they should go even further and bring in designers from other entertainment industries that can help give fresh new insight on the game. I think even for how much 4E changed D&D it still clung on to alot of conventions that it didn't necessarily need to.

 

[Windjammer]

Monte Cook? You know, that bare creativity behind 3e you mentioned?

2005: WotC hires Mike Mearls.

2011: WotC pays Monte Cook to write columns and "to work with R&D" (Mearls @Wizard s.com).

Observe: with, not at R&D. But thanks for alerting us of another suggestive hint that this time there's less money in the bag.

Not only do I disagree with your opinion, I disagree with the sentiment behind it. I think it is a great idea to pull people into Design from other industries.

Tom LaPille may not have a long history of playing D&D, but he can bring his MtG design experience (which using the term 'hack' is highly insulting to a game that outsells D&D) and he has the perspective of what interests newcomers to the game. MtG design has alot of structural elements that seem lacking in D&D design. I think you're looking at this from too much of a player's perspective. You don't just sit down and write a game. You need to plan and look at the long-term picture. 4E could have benefitted from some forward-thinking design organization.

And I think you are looking at this from too much of a historically uninformed perspective. If you search the archives of Enworld, you'll see I wrote a tribute to Rob Heinsoo when he left WotC. Now that is a man with an impressive design pedigree. Heinsoo has designed card games, board games, well after writing a huge chunk of the 3.0 Forgotten Realms Campaign Set, one of the most beloved and certainly most impressive D&D books ever published. He's designed in other areas, and what's really important, Heinsoo was really versed in highly demanding and intelligently designed wargames by GMT, from Commands & Colors to Great Battles of History. These are games about exploration, strategic resource management - today's conflict simulations, the inheritors of the games that drove some of the most intelligent and sophisticated things in Gygax' D&D.

If you think D&D's lead designers in the past were not versed in other game design areas, and that someone like Tom La Pill is their superior, well - to say the least, I'm curious how time will tell.

 

[Mr. Greengoat]

Ah. So, sell off old books you clearly haven't used, to replace them with new books... that you probably won't use?

Exactly.
Well not exactly. More like replace them with books I will have a better chance of using over a long period of time with a possibly wide variety of people.

It sounds to me like the real issue isn't the value of the game, or being "lingua franca", or anything like that. It's simply your buying habits.

I would hope that my buying habits and value of the game would line up.
And honestly the poll and thread title are up front about that.

But yes, truly this is about me buying 4E stuff and not getting to use as much of it as anticipated. And now I feel somewhat irritated that my spent money on all these shiny hardbacks is going to waste because it feels that the most commonly played RPG will now be something else shortly.* And I question the need for the shift to the new. It generates business for companies but it doesn't seem to help the player base at all.

* Is it really that wrong, as a player/DM, to develop for and build knowledge around the most commonly played set of rules? Sometimes minor personal preference in rule-sets pales beside who you get to play with.

Anyway I enjoy the discussion and am not looking for a PF/4E/5E slag-down. I would rather debate T&T 5.5 versus 7.5.

 

[Umbran]

Exactly.
Well not exactly. More like replace them with books I will have a better chance of using over a long period of time with a possibly wide variety of people.

4e is a top-selling game. The variety of people you can play it with is large.

I would hope that my buying habits and value of the game would line up.
And honestly the poll and thread title are up front about that.

Yeah, but look at that box of books. You're telling us now that you bought all of that before you used any of them to great extent? You dove in with how large an investment before finding out if you liked it?

I say this with respect - but if you're going to sink major cash into books before significant trial, no, you're highly unlikely to get your habits to line up with how much the game is worth to you. The only value the books have is in the pleasure you get out of them. If you aren't willing to determine that first, you'll continue to dump money into books you don't need.

And, really, if you've not used your 4e books, whether they're commonly used, liked, or lingua franca to everyone else isn't terribly relevant - they aren't really lingua franca to *you*.

And now I feel somewhat irritated that my spent money on all these shiny hardbacks is going to waste because it feels that the most commonly played RPG will now be something else shortly.*

If it does, so what? You yourself already noted that you're playing with systems that were taken out of print decades ago. Apparently, you find people to play those with. Finding folks to play a recent best-seller should be far easier. It isn't like everyone else's 4e libraries are going to evaporate, or something.

 

[Umbran]

2005: WotC hires Mike Mearls.

2011: WotC pays Monte Cook to write columns and "to work with R&D" (Mearls @Wizard s.com).

Observe: with, not at R&D.

As if that makes a functional difference from the player's point of view?

But thanks for alerting us of another suggestive hint that this time there's less money in the bag.

That he's not classified as a full-time, permanent employee does not actually hint that WotC's paying less for him - it only says that they aren't paying for his vacation, insurance, and such. He could be taking that same money in cash, for all we know.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

If it does, so what? You yourself already noted that you're playing with systems that were taken out of print decades ago. Apparently, you find people to play those with. Finding folks to play a recent best-seller should be far easier. It isn't like everyone else's 4e libraries are going to evaporate, or something.

Also, there's always a core of gamers who stick with the Last One when the new edition comes out. Unless 5e is printed with holy mens' blood and infused with some kind of essence-of-crack*, there are going to be people playing 4e for decades to come. I've felt myself begin to grognify recently, so I may be one of them.

*Like Magic cards. *sniff* Ahhh, yeahhhhhh...

Honestly, Mr. Greengoat, I find this preoccupation with what's in-print and lingua francas to be...I dunno, an aimless discussion. You must be getting something out of it though, so I guess that makes me just puzzled. I'm tempted to vote 'yes' just because you live in New Tiny York Apartment.

 

[Mr. Greengoat]

Honestly, Mr. Greengoat, I find this preoccupation with what's in-print and lingua francas to be...I dunno, an aimless discussion. You must be getting something out of it though, so I guess that makes me just puzzled. I'm tempted to vote 'yes' just because you live in New Tiny York Apartment.

Lingua Fracas?

Well I guess one of the roots of it is that there is the possibility of myself moving away to a gaming "desert" from my current gaming paradise in NYC. So I am somewhat fixated on:

A.) Possibly moving obscenely heavy stacks of books across the country and
B.) Having to cope with an existing player pool that may not want to play my personal favorite Synnibarr campaign.

Like I said, I wish that RPGs were more like golf, where they don't change the rules every five years.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Lingua Fracas?

Yes, I think that's an apt description of the D&D hobby.

Well I guess one of the roots of it is that there is the possibility of myself moving away to a gaming "desert" from my current gaming paradise in NYC.

Oh man, you're not moving upstate are you? 'Cause my group is looking for a new player.

B.) Having to cope with an existing player pool that may not want to play my personal favorite Synnibarr campaign.

My group rotates GMs, and the current GM gets to choose which game we play. *whistles* Just sayin'.

A.) Possibly moving obscenely heavy stacks of books across the country

I feel for ya. Moving all of one's junk really sucks. So here's my suggestion: unless you're certain to have extra space in the U-Haul, get rid of everything but your PHB. If you find yourself in a 4e game, you'll at least have the basics.

And if the group uses full errata and options, you can use the character builder -- or my personal preference, the first 4e clone. (I suspect when 5e hits, this clone will become one of the two lingua francas of 4e -- the other being printed RAW of course.)

 

[scourger]

But yes, truly this is about me buying 4E stuff and not getting to use as much of it as anticipated. And now I feel somewhat irritated that my spent money on all these shiny hardbacks is going to waste because it feels that the most commonly played RPG will now be something else shortly.* And I question the need for the shift to the new. It generates business for companies but it doesn't seem to help the player base at all.

* Is it really that wrong, as a player/DM, to develop for and build knowledge around the most commonly played set of rules? Sometimes minor personal preference in rule-sets pales beside who you get to play with.

I understand the frustration with the investment. That's why I look at new game books that I buy as entertainment reading first like other fiction or non-fiction. Very little of any of it do I keep to re-read. Also, buying less in the first place means less to store, move or sell later. You have to pan through a lot of dirt to get a nugget of gold, after all; and you don't keep the dirt just the gold.

...I wish that RPGs were more like golf, where they don't change the rules every five years.

Now, that is a game with a high investment and low return (for me). I don't find it an accident that it is an anagram for flog.